What is the best way to manage my Android phone with my Linux (U11.04) desktop?
I don't currently use it for music etc, and all the stuff I've found so far seems to focus on syncing to banshee. I'm more interested in contacts, SMS/MMS, and maybe photos (I say "maybe" because it's easy enough to just drag photos off via USB anyway).
I'm not particularly looking to sync the contacts etc with something else, just back them up, although sync would be fine. (Specifically: I went to NY recently and got a local PAYG SIM for the duration, then lost my UK SIM, so I now have a new SIM and have discovered just how many of my contacts were on the SIM not on the phone... Also, for the contacts that were on the phone it was obvious when I tried using them in NY just how many were prefixed 0nnn rather than +44nnn and a way to easily edit them all would be nice.)
Also I'd like to archive off my SMS messages, so again it's not really about sync but just backup.
Phone is an HTC Desire HD, although I will probably replace it with a newer Android (Samsung Galaxy S2 looking likely) in the near future.
On 31 October 2011 12:09, Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk wrote:
What is the best way to manage my Android phone with my Linux (U11.04) desktop?
For contacts I sync with my Google account and use a webbrowser to export all the data on a regular basis. Would that help?
Tim.
On 31/10/11 12:16, Tim Green wrote:
On 31 October 2011 12:09, Mark Rogersmark@quarella.co.uk wrote:
What is the best way to manage my Android phone with my Linux (U11.04) desktop?
For contacts I sync with my Google account and use a webbrowser to export all the data on a regular basis. Would that help?
Likewise. I set up my phone so all the contacts are stored on/shown from Google. That way, I can add/edit on any PC, or on my phone, and the changes are synched between them. You can import or export the contacts via the google contacts web page, you can back up your google contacts to your phone or sim if you want to. There are apps to backup your phone's contacts but IME they don't work on all phones, so I can't recommend one.
Also, there are apps to archive text messages, but I've never used on so can't recommend one. I find the website for the android marketplace useful. https://market.android.com/?hl=en
You can search for a type of app you want - e.g. SMS archive. For that it returns 1,756 results, sorted by a star rating out of 5. It also shows you how many people use it. You install apps to your phone from this website, providing you log in using your google account.
HTH Steve
On 31/10/11 12:29, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
On 31/10/11 12:16, Tim Green wrote:
For contacts I sync with my Google account and use a webbrowser to export all the data on a regular basis. Would that help?
Likewise. I set up my phone so all the contacts are stored on/shown from Google. That way, I can add/edit on any PC, or on my phone, and the changes are synched between them. You can import or export the contacts via the google contacts web page, you can back up your google contacts to your phone or sim if you want to.
OK, so I'm obviously being a bit dim here, but I can't quite work this out.
Looking at my contacts in Google I find lots of them there (but not all of them). I exported to CSV, changed 0nnn to +44nnn and imported, now I have duplicates of everyone (which I can merge but end up with each now having both the 0nnn and +44nnn numbers assigned to them).
However, now that I've tidied that up as best I can within Google, I can't see how to sync them back to the phone....
Also, there are apps to archive text messages, but I've never used on so can't recommend one. I find the website for the android marketplace useful.
Thanks, I didn't think to look in marketplace as I was expecting to install something on the Linux desktop end rather than the phone end, so that's given me something to go researching.
Thanks for the help.
On 31/10/11 12:51, Mark Rogers wrote:
Looking at my contacts in Google I find lots of them there (but not all of them). I exported to CSV, changed 0nnn to +44nnn and imported, now I have duplicates of everyone (which I can merge but end up with each now having both the 0nnn and +44nnn numbers assigned to them).
However, now that I've tidied that up as best I can within Google, I can't see how to sync them back to the phone....
I suspect you have some contacts on Google, some on the Phone & some on the SIM.
Suggest you go to contacts on the phone. Show all contacts. On my phone, that says "All" at the top. Then, press the menu key. You should then see a View menu. I have mine set to show contacts on phone, sim and google (and facebook). It shows how many contacts on each source too.
Then, if you have contacts on the phone or sim, use the menu button, then Import, to import them all into google.
Having got them all into google (do double check!!!!)
I would suggest, change phone to display only sim and phone contacts, and then delete these. However you may not want to.
Force a data synch. Home screen. Menu. Settings. Accounts and Synch. Synch all. Once the synch has finished...
Edit your google contacts to get them into the correct phone number order.
Make your phone show google contacts again.
Force a data synch again. Home screen. Menu. Settings. Accounts and Synch. Synch all.
Once the phone has updated, you should see the contacts with the correct phone details.
HTH. Steve
On 31/10/11 13:30, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
I suspect you have some contacts on Google, some on the Phone & some on the SIM.
Well to be more accurate, I *used* to have some on the SIM until I lost it, but yes ISWYM.
Suggest you go to contacts on the phone. Show all contacts. On my phone, that says "All" at the top. Then, press the menu key. You should then see a View menu. I have mine set to show contacts on phone, sim and google (and facebook). It shows how many contacts on each source too.
Right, well my Desire HD doesn't have a "Contacts" app, it has a "People" app and it doesn't seem to be that flexible. I guess that's a "feature" of HTC's Sense. Is "Contacts" standard Android? (When I get a new phone I'll probably put unbranded firmware on it, but at the moment I'm using a borrowed phone so I'm not "tweaking" it too much.)
I did find an option to import from SIM (but it's best to do that before losing the SIM :-), but nothing that seems to involve sync with Google.
On the plus side I do have most of my contacts backed up in O2's "Bluebook" (only "most" because I didn't sync my old phone very often), so I just need a way to transfer them, and looking at it it's going to be a manual effort because the export from O2 seems to strip too much out for it to be useful. But at least they're there.
Aside: For a general backup app I found https://market.android.com/details?id=com.mobileaction.AmAgent .. which looked promising but it has a Windows component which from my brief attempts so far doesn't install under Wine :-(
On 31/10/11 14:04, Mark Rogers wrote:
On 31/10/11 13:30, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
Suggest you go to contacts on the phone. Show all contacts. On my phone, that says "All" at the top. Then, press the menu key. You should then see a View menu. I have mine set to show contacts on phone, sim and google (and facebook). It shows how many contacts on each source too.
Right, well my Desire HD doesn't have a "Contacts" app, it has a "People" app and it doesn't seem to be that flexible. I guess that's a "feature" of HTC's Sense. Is "Contacts" standard Android? (When I get a new phone I'll probably put unbranded firmware on it, but at the moment I'm using a borrowed phone so I'm not "tweaking" it too much.)
Sorry, I'm using HTC too. App title is People as you say, I just get to it from a widget called "Contacts".
I did find an option to import from SIM (but it's best to do that before losing the SIM :-), but nothing that seems to involve sync with Google.
Sync with google will happen if Home screen/Menu/Settings/Accounts and Sync/ has Auto-Sync ticked (or if you do a manual sync), AND if you scroll down, find google, click on it, Sync Contacts is enabled.
On the plus side I do have most of my contacts backed up in O2's "Bluebook" (only "most" because I didn't sync my old phone very often), so I just need a way to transfer them, and looking at it it's going to be a manual effort because the export from O2 seems to strip too much out for it to be useful. But at least they're there.
Good luck, can't help with that, don't use O2 Steve
On 31/10/11 14:13, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
Sorry, I'm using HTC too. App title is People as you say, I just get to it from a widget called "Contacts".
Ah, fair enough.
I did find an option to import from SIM (but it's best to do that before losing the SIM :-), but nothing that seems to involve sync with Google.
Sync with google will happen if Home screen/Menu/Settings/Accounts and Sync/ has Auto-Sync ticked (or if you do a manual sync), AND if you scroll down, find google, click on it, Sync Contacts is enabled.
Ah, yes I disabled all of this in NY to avoid using too much data (I had 300MB of PAYG data and probably only used about a tenth of it so it was a bit pointless!)
Now re-enabled, we'll see what happens.
Good luck, can't help with that, don't use O2
Not sure I will for much longer, it's hard to recommend them. (I'd take recommendations for alternatives though!)
However it just happens that experiments with BlueBook (which is a half decent idea implemented very badly) mean I do have the contact info Ineed, I just need an "easy" way to manually enter it into the phone; adding a few dozen contacts with multiple numbers using the phone isn't something I can look forward to. I'm getting closer now though, thanks.
On 31/10/11 14:32, Mark Rogers wrote:
However it just happens that experiments with BlueBook (which is a half decent idea implemented very badly) mean I do have the contact info Ineed, I just need an "easy" way to manually enter it into the phone; adding a few dozen contacts with multiple numbers using the phone isn't something I can look forward to. I'm getting closer now though, thanks.
I'm assuming Bluebook allows you to view contacts on a web page? If so, a tedious, but quicker than doing it on the phone way to adding contacts would be have 2 browser windows open, and copy and paste the info into http://www.google.com/contacts
Of course if Bluebook allows you to export the info to a csv, then bob may be your uncle. Export from Bluebook to CSV. Tweak using spreadsheet-y goodness. Import into Google contacts.
Good luck!
Steve
Since you're rocking Android already it should be trivial;
Set you phone to sync up with a Google account, that's all your contacts backed up.
As you mentioned you have easy USB drag and drop for media files like pictures so that the tangibles safe.
Finally I have a free app, SMS Backup & Restore (https://market.android.com/details?id=com.riteshsahu.SMSBackupRestore&hl...) which dumps the SMS database out as an XML file on your memory card so again, its easy drag and drop backup.
There is also SMS Backup+ which backs them up to your Google account and stores them as mail threads which is cool (but I have a massive SMS inbox (10k~ messages) and it's too slow for that, but free!).
I would recommend if you have rooted your device (I did, but having just received my phone back from sending it away for repairs, those buggers re-flashed it and restored it to S-ON!) I would recommend Titanium Backup. It backs up apps and settings and all sorts of stuff to your memory card, and again, free!
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.keramidas.TitaniumBackup&featu...
HTH.
P.s. Sorry Steve!
On Mon, 31 Oct 2011, Mark Rogers wrote:
What is the best way to manage my Android phone with my Linux (U11.04) desktop?
If you're feeling adventurous, it's possible to install Gentoo (or presumably any distro you like) in a chroot on an Android phone - cf. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?s=c0a168ade51ea5d435f446cf3ee5508e&t=789003 - then just interact with it like you would any Linux machine.
In the setup discussed on that forum, the resulting Gentoo system has access to the contacts at </mnt/data/data/com.android.providers.contacts/databases/contacts2.db>, and the SMS messages at </mnt/data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases/mmssms.db>. Both are apparently in SQLite format 3.
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Dan -
James Bensley -
Mark Rogers -
steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk -
Tim Green